The Butcher's Daughter, page 38
Chapter Seventeen
Known for its wholesome food and good hospitality, we chose Shaw’s splendid establishment to eat and drink and celebrate - renamed Fúmsa an Díoltas in my honor - the place where the Twins had first tried to kill me. And after supper, when we were all feeling mellow, we gave thought to our future and plotted new adventures. The Twins were dead and the Spanish would be licking their wounds for a very long time. Falling Star was mine again and we had six chests topped off with Spanish gold. Good Fortune was lavishing her bounty on me. And I could hear the Caribbean whispering my name, whispering to me to come home. Yes, I thought of the islands as home. I could not imagine a better, richer life.
After midnight men started drifting back to the ships or headed out on the open road to see their homes and families again. I had given everyone thirty days’ liberty, give or take. Among my officers only Hunter remained behind with me to finish off the wine and ale.
And then a man I recognized as one of Martin’s, I did not know his name, burst in through the tavern’s door. A rogue gust of wind followed in after him carrying debris and dead leaves inside. He nodded when he saw me and hurried over to our table. His trousers were splattered with drops of what looked like blood and his boots were caked in mud. Sweat trickled down his brow. He paused to catch his breath.
“Lady Mary, Master Martin has sent me to find you. He’s down at the old mill on the Carrowbeg. Do you know it?”
“Aye, I know the place. It’s been abandoned for years. Why?”
“Master Martin is there. He’s been shot-up pretty good.”
“What? Who shot him?”
“I know not. Three angry men tried to rob us on the highway. They looked like foreigners, shipwrecked Spaniards on the run most likely. One of them pulled out a pistol and shot Martin off his horse when Martin went to draw his sword. Martin asks for your help before the Irish or Spanish find him. He asks you to secret him out of Westport. We must hurry and get him to a friendly town under the protection of English soldiers.”
“How many men does he have with him?”
“None.”
“None?”
“No, Madam, none. When we came ashore he brought only me.”
I looked around the tavern and counted, including Hunter and me, only thirteen of us. “How did Martin know I was here?”
“I cannot say for again I do not know, Madam. But this is where he told me I could find you.”
Hunter sighed. “No peace this night for the weary. What in God’s name is Martin doing in Westport?”
“I know not, sir.”
Hunter looked at me. “Christ, man, what do you know?”
“Forgive me, sir. I am but a simple soldier. Master Martin does not confide in me.”
Hunter nodded. “Aye. Mary, we should return to the ship to fetch more men and arms before we go traipsing through the woods at night.”
The Englishman shook his head. “Please sir, no. There is no time. Master Martin has lost a lot of blood and if either the Irish or the Spanish find him, well, he’s an Englishman with rank.”
I decided to take what men I had and we hurried off to the old mill. We did not wait on Martin’s man, who had left the tavern before us to look for a wagon we could use to transport Martin in.
It was a dark and moonless night. We moved with haste down a winding country road with lanterns, torches and muskets in hand.
The old mill was not far off. And then, just as the dark silhouette of the mill came into view, the woods on our flank erupted with tongues of flame and clouds of smoke. All around us the crackle of musket fire shattered the still, night air.
“AMBUSH!” Hunter screamed. “Hurry! Everyone to the mill! Run for it lads!”
“Ugh!” I cried out after I felt a sharp pain in my leg. I dropped to one knee, looked down and saw a hole in my trousers with a dark stain spreading out from the tear. A ball had grazed my thigh, gouging out a deep and bloody path.
Hunter pulled me up and put my arm around his neck. I hobbled next to him using my musket as a crutch and we made our way towards the old mill, towards a familiar place where I had often come in my youth when I needed a little solitude. Men were shouting and reloading their muskets. More shots whizzed by all around us. We were caught in the midst of a hellish cross-fire. I heard men, my men, screaming as they fell.
Hunter and I were the first to reach the mill. After we ducked inside we spun around to help the others. But there were no others. All my men were down. Their lanterns and torches littered the road, marking the place where each man had fallen. And then shadows in the woods stood up, two dozen strong or more, and slowly started walking towards the old mill, pausing along the road here and there to dispatch any of my wounded.
“Mary,” Hunter said, breathing hard. “There’s no latch to this door and there’s no time to make ourselves a barricade. Quick, up the stairs we go!”
As Hunter helped me stagger up a rickety, old staircase a voice from the woods - a voice ringing with power - called out my name. A chill shot down my spine. I froze.
“Mary, you loveless bitch! Death is coming for you! But before you die, I want you to know who it is who kills you now. First Dowlin, and then Remus and Romulus - you killed them all. They were my family. I was among the crew aboard Medusa’s Head when you savagely cut my uncles down. After we reached Westport, you set the rest of us free - you fool. Mercy is for the weak. You should have killed us all that night and dumped our bodies in the bay. Oh yes, the man you knew as Dowlin and murdered was my father and through me, my father lives. Tonight we settle old scores in blood. Tonight we close all accounts between us. This place, this mill, is your funeral pyre. Do you like it Mary? I pray you do. I chose this spot, this hallowed ground, with great care just for you. Sit tight now. We’re going to roast you and your fuckin’, rabid dog alive!”
I caught a glimpse of the voice calling out to me through a gap in the old mill’s framing. The tall, sinewy fellow speaking to me had an oddly familiar face.
Hunter pulled me up the stairs. When we reached the second level we found an empty room to bolt ourselves in. We had seen no sign of Martin anywhere. The night turned deathly quiet.
And then Hunter - my magnificent, gallant Hunter, my heart’s true joy - let his musket slip from his hands and he toppled over. I reached for an oil lamp and a tinderbox sitting on nearby table and frantically tried lighting the wick. It took me several tries as I fumbled in the dark. Once I had a flame, I found Hunter lying on his side with his shirt, front and back, soaked in blood. I ripped the material apart and saw one hole in his back and another in his chest where a ball had passed straight through. I sat next to him on the floor, composed myself, and gently placed his head in my lap.
He gazed up at me with vacant, listless eyes and tried to smile. I knew the look. I had seen the faces of dying men many times before. He grabbed me by the arm and squeezed with all the strength he had left.
“Mary, how rich my life has been with you,” he said in-between gulps of air. “I regret not one moment we shared together. Not one. Not even now, at this, my end. How much I loved you. You gave my life purpose and gladness. I die a happy, lucky man. I, I loved you with everything, with, with everything I had to give my, my darling, precious girl. God keep and save thee always, Mary. Whew, I’m cold. Go now, please, as I rest here for a bit. Save yourself, I beg you my sweetheart. I, I am so sorry to forsake you like this.”
“Shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, my dearest,” I said as I pressed my hand against his wound, trying to staunch the flow of blood. “Save your strength now my fine, fine man. We have voyages yet to make, new worlds to see, you and me together, hand-in-hand, across the deep and boundless sea.”
He managed a loving smile. He kissed my hand. He closed his eyes and took his final breath. Before I could reach his lips to kiss them one last time, he died.
And then I heard angry voices just outside the door. I picked-up Hunter’s musket and cocked the hammer back. But neither Dowlin’s son nor his men made any attempt to break inside. They had another plan in mind. They smashed their oil lanterns against the door, against the walls and hallway floor. The old mill began to crackle and burn.
“Blood for blood!” a voice cried out. Those were the last words I heard, followed by footsteps retreating down the mill’s rickety, old staircase as the fire spread.
I remained sitting on the floor, holding Hunter’s lifeless body in my arms. I stroked his hair. I rocked him back and forth and wept. The fire outside the room spread rapidly. The air inside the room turned thick with choking, grey smoke. My eyes began to sting and I found it harder and harder to breathe. I started coughing. I would suffocate from the toxic fumes before my flesh would burn and took comfort in that at least.
In-between my coughing fits, I snapped my head around and eyed a back room, a room not much larger than a closet. I looked down at the floor boards in that little room where I knew there was a hatch, a trapdoor, a trapdoor that led to a hidden crawl space underneath the floor boards used to access the old mill’s great wheel, to a wheel that dipped into the living waters of a stream, into waters that flowed out into the open sea, out into the rough and tumbly sea that had always nurtured me, that was life for me.
But I was unafraid and made no attempt to flee for soon I would be rejoining my beloved Hunter. Soon I would be standing at his side in a new and wondrous world. I was at peace with myself. I was content with my sad end.
I looked back down at Hunter, at my beautiful, shinning prince, and hugged his body tightly. I had loved this man more than life itself. My love for him was my one, pure act of grace in this cruel and unforgiving world. I could not desert him.
With all my heart I’ve tried to understand and love our Lord God. If He loves me, I know it not. He is either an unkind God or He is an unloving God or perhaps He is an indifferent God and if He is an indifferent God is that not the same as being an unkind or an unloving God?
I suppose many would say I am not a moral person. I have seen and spilt a lot of blood. How could any kind and loving god know me? These were my final thoughts as the heat and thick tendrils of smoke encircled me.
And then I touched my belly and smiled. I’m certain I felt the baby move.
I kissed Hunter’s forehead one last time and eyed the back room again. I looked down at the floor boards in that little room where I knew there was a hatch, a trapdoor, a trapdoor that led to the open sea, out to the rough and tumbly sea that was life for me.
I have always been, and I shall always be, the butcher’s daughter…
Afterword
Ships & Guns of the Elizabethan Era
- The Dawn of the Golden Age of Sail -
El Grande y Felicisima Armada
(From the Movie Elizabeth: The Golden Age)
When I first began down this journey with The Butcher’s Daughter, I worried whether I would have enough to say after the first chapter or two. What little I knew about Sixteenth Century Europe (before any research) seemed, well, boring. In this, I was very much mistaken. In politics, religion, science, art, literature, finance, technology and warfare, great changes were sweeping across Europe throughout the 1500s. Genius, innovation and opportunity flourished. This was the Renaissance, the Reign of Elizabeth I and the Protestant Reformation converging all at once. The peoples of Europe were stepping out of the Middle Ages and into the modern era, into a golden age that would culminate with the Age of Enlightenment, which in turn set the stage for the American War of Independence. These were dark times too. This was an age of African slavery and Indian genocide. This was a time when tens of thousands of Catholics and Protestants were torturing and slaughtering each other in the name of God.
Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the New World in 1492 changed everything of course. By the turn of the century, settlors - conquistadors, traders, money men, monks, opportunists, adventurers, doctors, craftsman, farmers, mercenaries, slavers, pirates and the like - were flocking to the Caribbean and beyond in vast numbers. Towns and cities were popping up like mushrooms. During the Sixteenth Century some 240,000 Spaniards alone immigrated to the Americas.
This staggering European expedition into the New World would not have been possible without a lot of ships and ships cost money, more money then what even kings and queens kept in their royal coffers. New sources of wealth were needed to fund the migration west and that need gave rise to a new middleclass of entrepreneurs adept in sophisticated international commerce and banking. These gifted moneymen cobbled together a cash-based, capitalist financial system and raised enormous amounts of investment money, money used to fund dreams, both small and grand.
Throughout history navies have played a role, sometimes a decisive role, in war and politics. In the ancient world Themistocles’s war galleys saved Greece and Western democracy from King Xerxes’s Persian hordes when his triremes ambushed and annihilated the Persian fleet in the Straights of Salamis after Leonidas and his three hundred fell at Thermopylae. And it was Octavian’s navy at Actium that crushed the dreams of his rival Mark Antony and Egypt’s Queen Cleopatra to rule the world, not Rome’s legendary legions. But these were exceptions. Before the Sixteenth Century, navies were largely used to transport men and supplies from one point to another and game-changing victories at sea like Salamis and Actium were rare.
In the Sixteenth Century men learned how to mount heavy cannon (guns in naval parlance) onto a rolling deck in large numbers, revolutionizing naval warfare. The flimsy ships of the past were quickly discarded for far more potent, heavily-armed cruisers. Fleets turned into armies on the water capable of projecting a kingdom’s power and prestige around the globe. And when the Spanish and Portuguese discovered gold, silver and pearls in the New World, Spanish and Portuguese shipyards began churning out larger, stronger Atlantic class treasure ships capable of hauling all that loot safely back to Europe - along with larger warships to protect them from treasure hungry marauders prowling the Caribbean Sea. Spain launched the world’s first battleships. Majestic galleons and carracks displacing one thousand tons or better and carrying huge guns able to hurtle a thirty pound ball over a mile away took to the oceans.
Envious of Spain’s fabulous New World wealth, and alarmed by her increasing power, England and France feverishly started building their own battleships to catch up to their great rival to the south. The three superpowers quickly found themselves locked in a deadly, high-stakes arms race. For the next four hundred years foundries forged bigger and heavier guns and shipyards built bigger and heavier ships with progressively intricate sail plans to propel them.
Spain gambled big on building bigger ships and heavier guns in her desire to command the sea lanes (the French eventually did the same). The English chose speed and maneuverability over big and heavy. In the end the English won.
Odds & Ends
The Ships
The workhorse of the day was the caravel and with a good master, these ships could sail up 10 knots, covering between 50 to 100 miles a day. The Spanish treasure fleets typically sailed no faster than about four knots.
Common ships of the day:
Man-o’-war/frigate: 360 tons, 190 men
Brigantine: 150 tons, 150 men
Sloop: small, fast, 100 tons, 75 men
Pinque: two-masted, square-rigged with narrow hull and overhanging stern
Caravel: 250 tons, three-masted square-rigged or lateen-rigged (a caravela, like Columbus’s Nina and Pinta were only 50 tons or so)
Dutch fly boat: fast, flat bottom, 200 tons
Galleass (or Turkish mahon): 250 tons, three masts and with up to 64 oars with five rowers to an oar
Galleon: the battleship of its day, a floating castle displacing 500 to 1000 tons or more
Carrack or Nao: the largest ship of the age (up to 1000 tons or more), the bowsprit is longer, the forecastles higher, but similar in characteristics to the galleon (Columbus’s Santa Maria was a smaller carrack (90 tons)
Pinnance: small, two-masted vessel used as couriers and transport
Patache: general name for any kind of small vessel used as couriers and for reconnaissance
Zabras: small vessel resembling a frigate
The Great Guns
The great guns were classified according to size and included canon royals, demi-cannons, culverin, demi-culverins, sakers, falconets, minions and others. They were cast from either iron or more expensive (more accurate) bronze. Some types were muzzle-loaded, others were breach-loaded. Someone thought to cut out gunports in the bulwarks and mount the guns on four-wheeled carriages.
Common guns of the day:
Falconet: Weight: 200 - 400 lbs.
Barrel: 4’
Shot: 1 lbs.
Max Range: 1,500’
Culverine: Weight: 4,500 lbs.
Barrel: 12’
Shot: 17 lbs.
Max Range: 7,500’
Demi-culverine: Weight: 4,000 lbs.
Barrel: 11’
Shot: 30 lbs.
Max Range: 5,100’
Cannon-petro: Weight: 4,000 lbs.
Barrel: 4’
Shot: 24.5 lbs.
Max Range: 1,600’
Saker: Weight: 1,900 lbs.
Barrel: 9.5’
Shot: 5.25 lbs.
Max Range: 7,400’
Minions: Weight: 800-1,000 lbs.
Barrel: 8’
Shot: 3 lbs.
Max Range: 6,000’
A Few Interesting Historical Tidbits
